It's probably a mistake to analyse this as political allegory.... the obvious tropes about colonialism. The Marshall as bluff colonial military boss man intent on resisting change to the status quo for reasons of self interest imagined as 'patriotism'. There are factions of the locals, split by levels of co-operation with overlords (really levels of collaboration.) Ky is rebel, rebel, rebel. Varan is more obsequious. Both are betrayed or treated with disregard by the Marshall.
Stubbs and Cotton are characters of the man in the street. Whatever happens doesn't really matter much to them but thy know it's over, just a matter of when.
Sondergaard is the intellectual struggling to understand the real process of Solonian changes. Jaeger is the tool of the idealogical Skybase leadership.
We've even got the useless idiot windbag executive (governors from Earth): the administrator (Geoffrey Palmer) and the Investigator (Peter Howell)
This is a mix of the Indian partition of the 1940's and Rhodesia of the 1960's (without obvious black people).
So the establishment are fools or madmen, the people lose until they overcome their own internal division, and the truth is waiting to be revealed in order to solve the fight. This is full of right-on cliche and revolutionary tropes.
I'm pretty sure Terrance Dicks didn't write i (he admits distaste for liberation philosophy on the dvd "making of" doco.... And I doubt Bob Baker and Dave Martin wrote it (these guys are first time writers here with obvious interest in other sorts of ideas). So how was it written? I would love to know.
As a SF story it's a better experience.... the theme of long term metamorphosis is used cleverly. The conservative political ideologues are dumb and ignorant as the local inhabitants. The complicated impasse is presented in ep1 with the Doctor's injection mission to provide the ancient tablets as some sort of mysterious solution. The plot stalls after a few episodes since the 'mysterious solution' is so hard to understand.
Obviously there's an interesting, untold back story about how the Timelords got hold of the ancient tablets and why they consider it important for them to be delivered to Solos at this particular time.(Why not years before? Why do it all? They are forbidden to interfere but here they are doing so without that much cover.)
But there are some muddled things. For instance, Jaeger's use of a maser to kill off the atmosphere and metamorphosed sections of teh planet is a doubtful choice. Masers work in the unltraviolet and are likely to tend to sterilise vegetation. The plan he pursues in later episodes is devastation and destruction plain and simple.
The production is on a similar level to other series 9 stories. There is a notable debut from costume designer James Acheson (still one of DW's few Oscar winning alumnuses, Peter Capaldi and Richard Todd are the only others, I think)
The Mutants is better than its reputation. But it's not anywhere near perfect.
ABM Rating 3.02/4.00
LJM Rating 3.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.81/10
No. 32 (out of 63)
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